Knocking Down Those Brick Walls – Part 1

As you can probably tell by the title – this week’s article will be tips on knocking down those brick walls. However, I have decided to do this in two parts, with part two, hopefully, in the next article (7 May). In part 1, I will be helping you knock down those more modern brick walls. Modern ones are slightly easier to knock down but they can certainly still be a pain!One way is to get the marriage or birth certificate, but sometimes if the parents name(s) don’t help as there could be many possibilities, in this case you can:Start with what you know is right and have the records to proof this. Create a timeline with what you know, whether mental or physical, this can include census records, marriage records etc. Then look at all the possibilities on earlier census records if you can, follow each possible person through the census records by looking at siblings and parents etc., you may find it helpful to write each possibility down on paper. Do that until you get to the earliest you have of the real person you are looking for.

If the person you are looking at is not the same as the person you want, you can exclude them from your working and look at another possibility. I used this method when I had to find a Frederick Poole! I also used this method for a Amelia Jones and found out her birth name was Carr but her father died and her mother got remarried to a Jones and Amelia took on her step-father's surname of Jones - so really do look at all the possibilities.Another way could be to look at the census records you know are your person as there may be a relative living with them who you could also trace, from there you can look for records that match both their family and yours. So if there is a ‘Brother’ listed as a relation on the census, you can check for families with both the Father and the Brother. This can be done with parish, BMD or census records. Also, bear in mind, there might also be relatives living next door!

Another way is to look for mistranscriptions or variants of the name as the enumerator might have believed the name was spelt one way, which is different to other enumerators. Also, if the writing is hard to read the transcriber could have read it wrong and put something else, so also look at the images if possible.

Also, look at alternative records that you may not have already looked at such as school records as there may be some clues in there.

Finally, you can get someone else to have a go at you brick wall, as they might have a different perspective of where to look and you may have overlooked something. I would suggest RootsChat for this but I'm sure other genealogy forums will help as well!

Well that's the end of part 1, part 2 will be published on the 28 May (hopefully). If this has helped you knock down some brick walls feel free to comment below.